Putting off Life, One Country at a Time

Big and Small

January 22, 2008

Apparently the tallest man in Asia is 242 cm, and the shortest is 74. And they’re both on my TV right now getting totally exploited for Japanese TV.

They’ve done a bunch of things with these guys. They took them to various places and had them hide then come out and say hi, just to see people’s reactions… they had the little guy dress up as Santa and hide in a present box… they’ve had them do real mundane things like make a cake and wash a dog, and had the audience ooh and aah over how well they do it (as if being really short or tall makes you unable to have basic motor functions). And they do things like go to random spots around Tokyo and approach random people to go “Hey, he’s short, eh! Check out how tall this other guy is!”, and point at them and have crowds of gawkers gather and do the “eeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh” thing only the Japanese can do.

Everywhere the little guy goes, and whatever he does, it’s drowned in cries of “kawaii! <3” (so cute!!) from whoever’s at the scene with him, and all the live audience. He put on a hat and they flashed up a picture of a beetle cos that’s kinda what he looked like.

Because they’re both Chinese, they’re being voiced over in Japanese. And the little guy is being voiced by someone who sounds about 5 years old. Also, when he walks, little squeaky sounds are placed over his footsteps, kind of how they do for small animals or children in cartoons.

I don’t know… the whole thing feels really offensive and exploitative. The two people can’t speak Japanese, and they tend to spend most of their time standing around looking kind of uncomfortable while everyone carries on incessantly about how tall/short they are! I’ve been watching it for over an hour now…

But my girlfriend just messaged me now to tell me she was watching a different channel, which I turned to to find a bunch of women breast-checking themselves. So I think I’ll stay on this channel for a while now. 🙂